Broadcast has an almost century long tradition in radio. Even with TV, the history goes back to 1930's. Broadcasting has been successful throughout the world in bringing both entertainment and information to mass audiences.
The latest step in broadcasting is the digitalization of both radio and TV. Digital radio has not gained much acceptance on the market. However, many hope that digital TV will bring new benefits and services to the consumer and, as a result, generate new revenue streams for the broadcasting industry. The basic concept of the TV service itself has, however, not changed much. Rather, the TV lives on as before even if it has become digital.
In later half of 1990's we saw the boom of the Internet. A whole set new of services and content became available to the consumers during a short, revolutionary and hype intense period. That period introduced e-commerce, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Portals, eyeballs game, dotcom companies and even the new economy. The developments in both access technologies (e.g. ADSL) and coding technologies (e.g. MPEG4 streaming) has made it possible to bring rich media content like video content to homes via the Internet. Despite of these technology and market breakthroughs media houses have been reluctant to distribute their content via the Internet due to its “free-of-charge” nature and the direct threat of piracy. Internet has also not been able to challenge the role of traditional media as the primary advertisement platform despite is great popularity.
Another development marking major shifts in the 1990's has been the rapid growth of mobile telecommunications globally. Through out the world voice telephony has moved from fixed wireline to mobile wireless. Consumers have an urge for new, mobile non-voice services that operators hope to fulfill with latest developments of technology like GPRS and 3rd Generation UMTS. In Japan DoCoMo by orchestrating the iMode business system and technology platform managed to boost the market with new services, new benefits to both consumers and content providers, and, consequently, with new revenue streams.